Snowden Says He Was a Spy, Not Just an Analyst

And I know that the NSA and what they do isn’t completely evil. They have, in point of fact, thwarted dozens of potential attacks on the homeland.

And you aren’t going to read about it either.

We need what the NSA does, and we need for it to be run by adults in Congress. It’s the latter part that isn’t happening. Same with the White House.

The epitaph on this administration is going to be ‘Abused Power from Minute One’.

"And I know that the NSA and what they do isn’t completely evil. They have, in point of fact, thwarted dozens of potential attacks on the homeland. And you aren’t going to read about it either."

Agree on the "not everything is evil", but what I do know is that the NSA didn't stop numerous terrorist attacks on our soil, as well as foreign attacks (shoe bomber, underwear bomber, several military recruiting/base shootings, Boston bombing, Benghazi, etc.). That is a fact. We know this painfully well here at FR.

I believe the NSA is too focused on "total situational awareness" - ingesting everything from everywhere - versus focusing on mining info on the highest probability targets. With so much on their plate, they're equally ineffective in everything, while trampling on our privacy and liberties. The potential for abuse, or unintended consequences, is unthinkable and should not exist in the first place. (I have deep experience in commercial "big data", so I speak from a long history of creating actionable info.)

"We need what the NSA does, and we need for it to be run by adults in Congress. It’s the latter part that isn’t happening. Same with the White House."

I agree, but there's a dark side of the equation where the spook agencies lie to congress, the FISA court, and probably the president. They're experts at "nuance" and can easily exploit the ignorance of career bureaucrats.

Exhibit 1) The authors of the Patriot Act were not aware of the extent of domestic NSA surveillance (we could argue that they should have, but the NSA is very good at obfuscation and congress is very ignorant on all things technology and business, so they're easy to tell, as Clapper said - the "least untruthful" rendition of what they are doing). Yep, The NSA director said that!

Exhibit 2) The FISA court is a rubber stamp and since its inception in 1978, has only rejected a few out of many thousands of requests. e.g. 1,856 requests in 2012 and 1,856 approved. 100%.

"The epitaph on this administration is going to be ‘Abused Power from Minute One’."

Totally Agree!!! Or "Treason from minute one"...

#15 does not address my comment at all.

Here it is again for you: “You are saying that you would have gone along with what the NSA was doing instead of revealing their unConstitutional activities to the public?”

Please, read the above comment and write it out for me that you disagree.

It would go something like, “I would stand by and let unConstitutional activities continue even if I had the power to stop or reveal them.”

I’m dying to see that in writing because that’s a ball-sy thing to say.

You are being a tad dense. OK, a bit more than a tad. Considerably dense.

No, the NSA’s activities in the US are unsupportable. Does that clear it up for you?

And now onto the question I’ve asked that you’ve completely sidestepped. Do you agree with Snowden’s release of information in our international intelligence gathering? That would also be a yes or no question.

And if you answer no, the followup question is also a yes or no. Is that treasonous?

The merits of the information Snowden released can be debated. Snowden’s motives are highly questionable. Snowden’s claims he was an undercover spy are so specious to make me think he is suffering from some mental illness which probably explains his motivation. The CIA would not put an agent undercover only to give him a cover job as a network admin at ... wait for it ... the CIA.

Also, the NSA is a military signals intelligence (eavesdropping) organization. The idea of being a undercover agent for an organization primarily consisting of listening posts makes no sense.

These two points are obvious to anyone with any knowledge of national intelligence. Unfortunately, the network anchors who have interviewed Snowden do not know enough to ask a challenging question.

Calling me dense doesn’t make up for the fact that you didn’t read what I originally wrote and, instead, knee-jerked off a response that made some wrong assumptions. You reacted poorly and now you want to place some blame on me. That’s pretty sad.

And, yes, what he did after he revealed the unConstitutional activities of the NSA was treasonous.

I can’t believe I had to hand-hold you through every, tiny point of this; explaining it in detail like you would to a child... pathetic.

That’ll come as a surprise to his wife, Morgan Fairchild.

The Irony is Strong with this story:

Susan Rice denies Snowden's claims that he was an undercover spy working for the CIA hours before the NSA releases the 'one' inquiry email 'Ed' sent before leaking
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2643148/Susan-Rice-denies-Snowdens-claims-undercover-spy-working-CIA-hours-NSA-releases-one-inquiry-email-Ed-sent-leaking.html

And she's also got some land for sale in Florida, if you just fell off the turnip truck...

"Dueling Liars", with the tune for "Dueling Banjos" playing in the background.

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